Sustainability, Vol. 12, Pages 644: Relationships among Government Funding, R&D Model and Innovation Performance: A Study on the Chinese Textile Industry (Sustainability)

The textile industry is a traditional pillar industry of the national economy in China. The strategic goal of Chinese innovation is to upgrade and transform traditional industries and make them develop in coordination with high-tech industries, so as to realize sustainable industrial development. At the core of industrial sustainable development, the innovation of the textile industry in China has become an important issue worthy of attention. Based on resource-based theory and signal transfer theory, the relationship between government funding, R&D models and the innovation performance of the Chinese textile industry is studied. The results show that government funding has a significant, direct promoting effect on the internal R&D and science-based cooperation of enterprises. Government funding indirectly promotes market-based cooperation through internal R&D. The promoting effect of internal R&D on innovation performance is greater than that of cooperative R&D. Internal R&D and cooperative R&D have more promoting effects on R&D reserve performance than those on market performance. Government funding indirectly promotes innovation performance through the mediation of internal R&D and science-based cooperation. The threshold effect of cooperative R&D indicates that only when the cooperative R&D intensity exceeds the threshold can government funding foster innovation performance more effectively. The conclusions can provide theoretical guidance for the formulation of innovation policy.